Hotfix Limits 'The Tall Man's Finger' to Zombie Dogs

Upcoming Diablo III fixes restrict the ring's Legendary powers, and a Monk 4-piece set bonus

The Tall Man's Finger - Diablo III Legendary
New rounds of Diablo III hotfixes are rolling out, to take care of issues with skills and Legendary items that have not been working correctly. One fix is for the Legendary ring The Tall Man's Finger, which has the special power Zombie Dogs instead summons a single gargantuan dog with more damage and health than all other dogs combined. That special ability is only supposed to work for the Witch Doctor's pets from skills like Summon Zombie Dogs, but was active for many other class's pets. It dramatically increased the power of skills like the Barbarian's Call of the Ancients and the Crusader's Phalanx, making those pets do much more damage! The hotfix restricts the ring back to the Witch Doctor dogs, as originally designed. That's one of the changes that went in recently, or will be hotfixed shortly, in Diablo III.


Massive Pets All Around
The bug with the ring caused pets to become more powerful, across many skills and classes. A recent reddit thread had examples of the power of the ring, as it improperly buffed other pet skills. The trade-off with the ring for Witch Doctors is that it reduces all the Zombie Dogs to a single dog; when the ring was used with other pet skills, all the pets were there, and each one was more powerful than normal. Alongside the hotfix update, a blue post detailed the issue.
The Tall Man's Finger is only intended to work with Witch Doctors, and other classes benefiting from its Legendary affix is actually a bug. We plan to implement a hotfix fairly soon that will correct this issue, but we wanted to let everyone know that we plan to do so before hand. Thank you all for the reports!


Patch 2.0.5 Hotfixes
Here are the recent Patch 2.0.5 Hotfixes, since the last round. They include upcoming fixes to the ring and the 4-piece set bonus for Monks, as well as a couple other fixes that already went live.
[UPCOMING HOTFIXES]

Items


[LIVE HOTFIXES]
General
  • Vote Kick will no longer immediately eject players from the party without party confirmation; other members of the party are now properly prompted to confirm or deny the request.


Barbarian
  • Different Warcry runes now properly stack with one another and are no longer overwritten.


Read on for other Blizzard Blues posts, including a request for feedback from Mac Diablo III players whose client crashes in Nephalem Rifts.


Deadly Reach - Scattered Blows Concerns
There have been reports from players that the Monk skill Deadly Reach - Scattered Blows was not properly doing Lightning damage for all 3 hits. That was addressed in the Bug Forum, as well as a post by Grimiku. From the testing so far, the QA team believes the skill is performing properly.
Posted by: sbreame


Deadly Reach : Scattering Blows rune was, and still is a split up skill which is causing problems for most who's using it, in terms of damage. It is the LOWEST base damage spirit generator Monks have, if not the lowest in game.

1st hit = Physical (109% weap damage)
2nd hit = Physical (109% weap damage)
3rd hit = Lightning (156% weap damage)

In the patch notes, it stated that this would be fixed. No changes were made.


Hi Sbreame,

We've tested this extensively in the current live client and the damage type dealt by all three strikes of Deadly Reach - Scattering Blows is in fact lightning. This damage is also properly being affected by +Lightning Skill Damage affixes and effects. Was there some other issue with the skill that you wanted to report?

As for the actual damage output of the skill, I can't really speak to what the designers think about the current state of Deadly Reach at present. As always, balance changes are ongoing and a particular skill or feature could definitely change in a future patch if the designers feel that there is a need to do so. In the meantime, I appreciate the feedback and I'll pass it on.

I hope that helps clear things up for you. Thanks a lot for the report!


Monster Affix Damage
Another area of testing was with monster affix damage. There was a bug with Plagued recently, but that has been hotfixed; the rest of them are all apparently working correctly!
We've been investigating monster affix damage to see if anything was doing unintended damage or not, and we've determined that affix damage is currently working the way it should be. For clarity, there was a bug with the Plagued affix doing more damage than we wanted, but that has been fixed, though.


Mac Client Crashes in Rifts
There has been an ongoing issue with the Diablo III client crashing in Nephalem Rifts, especially on certain Mac systems. The QA team is looking for information from players who run into this bug, so they can try to squash it once and for all!
Hey all,

We'd like to gather additional information from any Mac players who continue experience rift crashes/freezes. This will help our Mac team further research this issue. Follow the instructions below to help us out!

1. Please post the following system information:
Obtaining and Posting System Information

a) Click on the Apple Menu while holding down the Option key and select System Information (10.7 and later).

b) Copy the information from the following sections and paste them into your post. Please copy in the following order: Hardware Overview, Graphics, and Software. Do not include any serial numbers, hardware UUIDs, or account/login names or information in your post.

2. If you have recently experienced these specific crashes/freezes, first gather the following files:

You can email those files to this address: macsupport@blizzard.com

Use this line for the subject: [forum avatar name] [Rift crash] [12878918249]

Note: No replies will be sent, as this email is used for only for information gathering.

Thanks!

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